John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) was born in Rome to English parents, who returned to England in 1854. Waterhouse, nicknamed ‘Nino’, studied at the Royal Academy of Art and began regularly successfully exhibiting at the Royal Academy from 1871 to 1916. Waterhouse belongs to the ‘Pre-Raphelites’ who also include Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. He is also known as the ‘modern pre-Raphelite’ partly due to the influence of the ‘Impressionists’ on his painting. Waterhouse’s work is characterised by his subject matter, which is generally based in classical myths and history, including ancient Greece, Rome as well as Arthurian legend. Waterhouse’s works are exhibited in numerous galleries and museums around the world, and Australia is blessed that the respective state galleries have some of his best and well-known work. The Art Gallery of South Australia has The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius (1883) as well as Circe Invidiosa (1892). TheFavourites of the Emperor Honorius shows the Emperor in his throne room, preferring to concentrate on his birds than attending to business and his waiting councillors. The drama of the scene is heightened by the spacial arrangement and particular use of colours – the dark reds and crimsons being the domain of the Emperor, contrasted with the paler colours associated with the councillors.

ADELAIDE STREET ART 2016

Slowly but steadily going through all the 2016 pics – and if I say so myself – what a terrific record of my time here. Am cataloguing under certain subjects, topics and themes. One is ADELAIDE: STREET ART – which is essentially any piece of work that is deliberately created for public observation, service and enjoyment. Subsequently, these works are primarily located outside where there is constant human interaction – but not always.

Adelaide is terrific in the vast number and diversity of its STREET ART.

PLAY GROUND – Hindmarsh Square

HINDMARSH SQUARE is in the heart of the Adelaide CBD, at the cross-section between Pultney Street and Grenfill Street, dividing the square’s park into four sections. Each section has something unique inside it. The one in the Nth West corner is particularly unique and special. It is a ‘PLAY GROUND’ unlike any other. It has Water Ecological based theme, with written reminders about wasting water on small grey like drops of water placed around the ‘Play Ground’.

Despite its brightness and unique appearance, however, this ‘Play Ground’ is actually a ‘wasteland’ littered with skeletons and parts scattered throughout this ‘Play Ground’, and all bleached white as if they have been there for a period of time; a desiccated fish and bones that are inter-mixed with relatively large oversized objects, such as a single ‘thong’, ‘peg’, ‘tap’, ‘bell’, lying in isolated splashes of blue as if lost or abandoned on a beach somewhere. It is post-apocalyptic desolation, a ruin – the large ‘ball-bell’ buried in blue sand has already tolled its last.

The serious intent and fantastical extraordinariness of this essentially pretty but barren ‘waste land’ does not, however, prevent this being a popular place to have lunch during the working week, especially when the Spring sun is out. Very few, however, actually sat on any of the objects within the ‘Play Ground’; the single ‘peg’, ‘bone’ and the ‘fish skeleton’ being the only objects on which people did sit for a while.

The irony is delightful – this is a very engaging ‘rubbish dump’, and it is very clean, complimenting the pristine nature of the clean-cut, a-symmetrical modern glass towers that dominate it.

It is, nonetheless, a very popular place with numerous places to sit around the perimeter of the ‘Play Ground’. Mischievously, however, I couldn’t help wonder whilst pic-snapping away how many people who were then there knew and/or realized that they were actually in a ‘waste land’, a ‘rubbish dump’ – and did it matter? Not really – because the extraordinary artistry, including colour choice, texture, and position, is so delightful, inventive, unique and inviting that you want to engage directly with it. Terrific. A pretty ‘hell’.

I don’t know who created this fantastic piece of STREET ART – can anyone help.